As an idiopathic disease, it begins as erythematous, dark-red spots--usually preceded and accompanied by mild or grave systemic disturbance--which gradually pass into gangrene and sloughing; the eventual termination may be fatal, or recovery may take place. As a symptomatic disease, it is occasionally met with in diabetes and in grave cerebral and spinal affections.
In Raynaud's disease (symmetric gangrene) the parts affected are the extremities, such as fingers and toes, the ears and nose, only occasionally other parts. The first symptoms observed are coldness and paleness of the part; followed sooner or later by congestion of a dark red, livid, or bluish color, with sometimes swelling, and tenderness and shooting pains. The termination is usually in gangrene of a dry character, with, in some instances, vesicles and blebs along the edges; in other cases the parts become atrophied, withered, and indurated.
Treatment is based upon general principles.
Erysipelas is an acute specific inflammation of the skin and subcutaneous tissue, commonly of the face, characterized by shining redness, swelling, [oe]dema, heat, and a tendency in some cases to vesicle- and bleb-formation, and accompanied by more or less febrile disturbance.
#Describe the symptoms and course of erysipelas.#
A decided rigor or a feeling of chilliness followed by febrile action usually ushers in the cutaneous disturbance. The skin at a certain point or part, commonly where there is a lesion of continuity, becomes bright red and swollen; this spreads by peripheral extension, and in the course of several hours involves a portion or the whole region. The parts are shining red, swollen, of an elevated temperature, and sharply defined against the sound skin. After several days or a week, during which time there is usually continued mild or severe febrile action, the process begins to subside, and is followed by epidermic desquamation.
In some cases vesicles and blebs may be present; in other cases the disease seriously involves the deeper parts, and is accompanied by grave constitutional symptoms. In exceptional instances sloughing takes place.
A mild, transitory, limited, and often recurrent erysipelatous condition of the outlet and immediate neighborhood of one or both nostrils is met with, taking its origin from an inflammation of the hair-follicles just inside the margin of the nose; constitutional symptoms are usually wanting. Somewhat similar, doubtless, is the erysipelatous inflammation (_erysipeloid_) observed on the fingers and hands of butchers, etc., starting from a wound, apparently as a result of infection from putrid meat or fish.